Good Enough?

I didn't watch Joe's big boy press conference last night, but I did check the aggregators later to see if there'd been any major blunders. My sense of things was that, although he'd started out by misgendering Vice Preasident Trump, his performance was good enough:

The Democrat Party is left in limbo as President Joe Biden’s NATO press conference avoided total disaster despite several gaffes, and it could stave off internal efforts among Democrats to remove him as the nominee in the immediate future.

. . . Biden’s former White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said on MSNBC that she thinks the press conference “gave [Biden’s campaign] more time, which for the campaign is a win.”

Nevertheless, the consensus that seems to be emerging is more aligned with Susan Glasser in the New Yorker:

And sure enough, Biden was barely into his first response before he let loose another gaffe, arguably even cringier than the first. Asked about Vice-President Kamala Harris and her ability to step in for him if need be, Biden responded by saying, “Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice-President Trump to be Vice-President if I think she was not qualified to be President.” This time, he did not even spot the error.

. . . But, for those who listened to the full hour of Biden’s press conference, it wasn’t, in the end, the gaffe that made this a poor performance. It was Biden’s over-all halting, painful delivery. It was his struggle to find words, and the fact that when he did find them they were often not the right ones. Most important, it was his inability to make the case for himself—and his difficulty prosecuting the case against Trump.

Mark Leibovitch wrote this in The Atlantic before the press conference:

Never underestimate the destructive power of a stubborn old narcissist with something to prove.

Ideally no one gets hurt along the way: Maybe grandpop refuses to give up his license, drives into an oak tree, and only the car gets totaled. But sometimes there are casualties[.]

. . . President Joe Biden, 81, is acting like one of history’s most negligent and pigheaded leaders at a crucial moment, and right now, we are all pedestrians.

Since his debate debacle nearly two weeks ago, much of America has been locked into the classic “Will he or won’t he?” cliffhanger. Will Biden step aside and not run for reelection, as massive majorities of voters have for years said they want him to do? Or will he persist in pursuing one of the most ill-fated and ill-advised presidential campaigns ever carried out?

. . . As of now, it looks as if Biden is committed to “riding this out” and “staying the course,” no matter how unfit he might be for the ugly course ahead. This is, maddeningly, the only consideration that now matters, because Biden is the ultimate decision maker.

According to Axios,

Democrats who were bracing for the worst out of President Biden's press conference at the NATO summit instead saw a passable performance – but it doesn't appear to have calmed Capitol Hill's panic around his candidacy.

. . . One senior House Democrat, asked it the press conference would quiet the uproar on Capitol Hill, told Axios "probably not," while another said "not quite, but almost."

Said another House Democrat: "Tonight he looked better than the debate, but still not enough to recover and beat Donald Trump."

So for now, the emerging situation seems to be that Trump is at minimum expected to do much better than he did in either 2016 or 2020, while the main obstacle for Democrats is Joe Biden himself. The party is consumed by controversy over whether to replace him as a candidate, but even if it were to agree to do this, there's no concrete plan of action, and other than Kamala Harris, there's no clear substitute. Nor is there any assurance that Harris would do any better against Trump.

Meanwhile, the longer the uncertainty drags out, the less time is available for a replacement Democrat candidate to unify the party or organize a campaign operation, and the less pressure is on Trump to do strenuous campaigning while the Democrats self-immolate in full view.

Right now, I still think the closest parallel to this year's campaign is 1972, except that the foreordained loser this year is the incumbent, not the challenger. It doesn't mean as much if the challenger has no credibility, as McGovern didn't have, and the Democrats were able to disavow him as a representative Democrat in the wake of his loss, while they soon enough recovered their credibility by shifting the focus to Nixon with Watergate.

The problem for 2024 is that Biden is the incumbent Democrat unifier and elder statesman.

"I Sorta Got On My Knees And Begged Him."

Biden describes giving NATO Sec. Gen. Jens Stoltenberg the Medal of Freedom: "I sorta got on my knees and begged him." pic.twitter.com/ONvsEIcWbC

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 11, 2024

It took me some time to connect the dots between two cryptic clips of Joe's remarks surrounding the NATO summit yesterday. It looks as though he was trying to tell some sort of private joke that stayed in his mind over two separate contexts.

The clip above was in a discussion with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, while the clip belolw that more or less explains it was made at the NATO summit itself in a direct exchange with retiring Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:

😳Oh boy…
“I realize after _____ing your wife. “

“I personally ask you to extend your service….laughs......... Forgive me?”

⁉️What did Joe just say he was doing to his wife? pic.twitter.com/KHi4bojNfY

— RoamingRN (@roaming_rn) July 9, 2024

Nobody is quite sure what the word was as Joe slurred out "_____ing", but I'm with those who think it was indeed _____. As best I can reconstruct what was going on in the presidential brain, the story he was trying to tell was that he was getting down on his knees and begging, but the person he somehow meant to be begging wasn't Secretary General Stoltenberg, it was the Secretary General's wife, or something like that. Yuk, yuk, huh?

As I said when Joe violated diplomatic protocols at the G7, including forehead-bumping Pope Francis, meetings at that level are intricately pre-scripted, and there are meant to be no surprises, especially not in the public exchanges. Ronald Reagan did not share toidy jokes with Margaret Thatcher no matter how much they may have agreed in their respective agendas.

At the very best, what this suggests is that Joe had basically lost situational awareness: this was a diplomatic summit at which nobody jokes about diddling the wives of other high-level diplomats, but Joe just had to get out a giggly sort of barb that nobody quite understood, but it had apparently been on his mind for hours. In this, he did nobody any favors.

But this turned out not to be the only time sex was on his mind yesterday -- he dropped by an AFL-CIO meeting and came up with this:

BIDEN: "I look back now and wonder how my dad handled those thin walls" 😳 pic.twitter.com/cMgtH5VBCW

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 10, 2024

As this commentator said, "This is what happens when Biden speaks without a teleprompter." He tells private jokes that either nobody quite gets, or if they get them, it makes them uncomfortable. On one hand, the experimental data that backs up the Dunning-Kruger effect involves people who tell jokes that nobody thinks are funny, but on the other, that a US president would routinely do this sort of thing, especially in a diplomatic context, is worrisome.

Nevertheless,

An embattled President Biden is set to stage a “big-boy” press conference Thursday afternoon — the first since his disastrous debate performance threw his 2024 re-election campaign into utter disarray.

The 81-year-old plans to close out the NATO summit in Washington — an event meant to showcase his leadership on the world stage — with the rare, solo news conference as he scrambles to prove to the American public that he’s capable of serving another four years.

The commander-in-chief is scheduled to take questions from the White House press corps at 5:30 p.m.

Beyond that,

President Joe Biden is slated to participate in a one-on-one interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, as the 81 year old continues to stand defiantly in his decision to remain in the presidential race, despite the pleas of some very well-known Democrats.

NBC’s Monica Alba announced the upcoming interview, writing on X, “BREAKING: @NBCNews anchor Lester Holt will sit down with President Biden for an exclusive one-on-one interview on Monday in Austin, Texas.”

The only thing that comes to mind here is "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Why are Hunter and Dr Jill still putting him up to this? One theory is that Obama, Pelosi, and Schumer have begun to lose patience, and they're telling Joe he's got to do more to prove he's healthy enough to continue. In this scenario, the Dunning-Kruger effect is in full force, and Joe is convinced that all he needs is one good performance to pull it off -- not just to keep the nomination, but in fact to win in November.

Another scenario might be that Hunter and Dr Jill know it's a lost cause, but they aren't yet ready to throw in the towel. Letting Joe do one last press conference, one last interview, maintains the fantasy for just a few more days, and they'll deal with next week when they come to it.

But it's hard to imagine that in the context of June's repetitive disasters, anyone seriously thinks Joe is in a position to rescue his candidacy and turn things around in the next few days, especially given his performance yesterday.

UPDATE: Today's "big boy" press conference has been moved back from 5:30 to 6:45.

So, Why Has The Press Suddenly Turned On Biden?

Whether it's thought to be a cynical betrayal or a belated acknowledgement of the obvious, there's been a general recognition that the legacy media -- more or less except for MSNBC -- has turned against Biden in its news coverage and often editorially called for Joe to "step aside", although without explaining precisely what that should imply. Piers Morgan sums it up at the New York Post:

The US mainstream media are currently gorging on President Biden’s cognitive decline like ravenous hyenas on the freshly slain carcass of a decrepit old buffalo.

In fact, since his train-wreck debate debacle, the nation’s predominantly liberal-skewed, Democrat-defending journalists have competed with each other as to who can sound the most faux shocked, horrified, appalled, and furrowed-brow-uncomprehending about the physical and mental state of their president.

But why? I think if Rush Limbaugh were still around, he'd give the same reason he gave at the end of his life as Trump left the White House at the end of his first term: ratings. Whatever the media thought of Trump, they got ratings when they covered him, and they lost those ratings when he was out of the news. For instance:

CNN has seen ratings plummet since former President Donald Trump left the White House, according to a Fox News report on Nielsen Media Research data.

The network averaged 2.5 million primetime viewers between the day after the election— November 4, 2020 — and Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021, Fox News reported.

Since President Joe Biden was sworn in, however, those numbers have dropped dramatically. An average of 1.6 million viewers tuned in during primetime hours between January 21 and March 15, Fox News said. That's a downturn of 36% since Biden took office.

So why did CNN, of all networks, host the first debate? As homicide detectives say, there's no such thing as a coincidence. Why did ABC hold the interview with George Stephanopoulos? Again, no coincidence. Biden supporters nevertheless accuse the media of stirring up the controversy over Biden's cognitive decline instead of blandly outlining Joe's steady hand, decency, and years of experience. Well, why aren't they?

Part of the problem is simple -- if it bleeds, it leads. The commander in chief is sick, but if that's not bad enough, the White House is covering it up. But that doesn't seem to be the full explanation. Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge quotes extensively from the Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerry Baker, in an opinion piece there behind a paywall:

the fiction of Mr. Biden’s competence … suggests they [the Democrats] evidently thought they could get away with promoting it. [Yet] by perpetuating that fiction they were also revealing their contempt for the voters and for democracy itself[.]

. . . They sought a loyal and reliable figurehead, a flag of convenience, under which they could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life — on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery. There was no more loyal and convenient vehicle than Joe.

You [the Democratic machine] don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years about how this man was both brilliantly competent at the job and a healing force for national unity – and now tell us, when your deception is uncovered, that it’s ‘bedtime for Bonzo’ – thanks for your service, and let’s move on.

Except that News Corp, the Murdoch vehicle that owns the Wall Street Journal, was consistently Never Trump throughout this same period, and it was just as complicit as any other legacy outlet in perpetuating the idea that boring Biden was preferable to tempestuous Trump. Gerry Baker here is doing nothing but limning the same faux shocked, horrified, appalled, and furrowed-brow-uncomprehending schtick of all his colleagues.

In fact, even before the June 27 debate, it was recognized that in its initial early June story that made it OK to talk about Joe's cognitive decline, the WSJ was simply giving everyone a permission slip, not covering anything new. I quoted Greg Gutfeld at the time:

The Wall Street Journal revealed that Joe Biden may be suffering cognitive decline. Talk about breaking news. Nice work there, Wall Street Journal!

So, although nearly every legacy outlet from CNN through ABC and NBC to Fox is cashing in on the Joe-is-senile stampede, there may even be a faint element of remorse in the brow furrowing. This goes back to the origin of the 2024 constitutional crisis, which stems from the "stolen" 2020 election. I've been saying that the current crisis of succession is actually very similar to the 1972-74 Watergate succession crisis, which in turn was caused by the conditions of the 1972 election and the failure of the Democrats to run a viable opponent to Nixon.

As I've been pointing out, in order to get a Nixon resignation, it was necessary to get Agnew to resign first and replace him with the safe and boring Gerald Ford, who in turn was replaced by the uber-lizard-person Nelson Rockefeller. This all was needful to mitigate the effect of Nixon's 1972 landslide victory over McGovern and restore center-left credibility, which it did in large part by demonizing Nixon and allowing the national media to portray themselves as saviors and heroes.

So the Watergate crisis was something that extended over a period of years. I think the 2024 constitutional crisis has been building even longer -- it arguably started when Trump announced his first candidacy in 2015, became more acute with his 2016 surprise victory, and grew even more problematic through two unsuccessful impeachments, the questionable 2020 Biden election victory, the January 6 committee, and now the revelations that, enabled by rhe establishment media, the Democrats concealed Biden's cognitive decline over a period that probably began while he was vice president.

But at the root of both the Watergate crisis and the 2024 crisis is the failure of the Democrats to nominate a viable presidential candidate. The difference is that in 1972, McGovern was recognized from the start as a foreordained loser, to the point that no serious Democrat would agree to run as his vice presidential nominee. In 2024, the election was at least politely handicapped as a "tossup", and up to the events of June, establishment media was complicit in concealing Biden's actual condition.

One aspect of how the 2024 crisis is resolved will be, as in 1972-4, the need for legacy media to rehabilitate its credibility in the crisis's wake. They'll need to find new Woodwards and Bernsteins at minimum. This is partly what's happening now -- Jake Tapper is in the running. Even Jen Psaki's got herself a new face, don't count her out.

Jen Psaki totally had plastic surgery. She looks different. https://t.co/8in1xjFQCM

— Cecilia Glennon (@CeciliaGlennon) December 15, 2023

The auditions for the next Woodward and Bernstein are already under way.

A Lie Is As Good As A Confession

Regarding what may or may not ail Joe, I'm not qualified to say, except that the media has suddenly taken a lot of interest in the question. What intrigues me is the evasiveness of the White House's attempts to answer the questions from the press. I know almost nothing about Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, but as a truie crime fan who reads and watches the insights of detectives about interrogation, I've learned a few things about lying -- and in particular, the truism that a lie is as good as a confession.

In other words, if you can catch someone in a definite lie, you're starting to get a road map to just what it is they're trying to cover up. It's hard to avoid thinking that Press Secretary Jean-Pierre is displaying signs of lying in her answers to a couple of the questions she was asked in her press briefing yesterday. The relevant sequence starts at about 38:00

Q: When you were here last Tuesday, you were asked if the president had had any medical examinations [unintelligible] including the time period after the debate, and you said flately, "no". A few days later, you admitted the president had had a short checkin thereafter. Those are two very different. . .

KJP: . . . To answeer your point, he did not have a medical exam, he did not have a physical, he did like a verbal checkin with his doctor a couple days after the debate, and it was very quick, it was a couple of words that were spoken to each other, and that's how we were able to give you that answer, he did not haver a medical exam, he did not have a physical. . . I did not mean to steer anybody wrong, I was still thinking about the physical, that's how I answered the question, . . . and that's when we went back and asked the medical doctor, and he said they had a verbal checkin.

Q: [Regarding the frequent visits of a Parkinson's specialist over the past several months,] Could you state very clearly, yes or no, was that expert here to participate in anything surrounding the care of the President of the United States?

KJP: So let me just say a couple things. We have had a comprehensive -- I just want to take another step back, a comprehensive physical examination, the president has had that, we've given a comprehensive report, we've shared that the past three years, every year that he has, every year that he has had this exam, he sees a neurologist, and, uh, just to give you a quote from that, the report most recently in February, an extremely detailed neurological exam was again reassuring in that there were no findings which wokuld be consistgent with any cerebellar or central neurologicsl disorders such as a stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons's, ascending lateral sclerosis, end quote, so that came from, in February, that comprehensive report trhat was prepared by the president's doctor, that I shared with all of you, so anybody who is watching can certainly go to our website.

Several things pop out at me, and they're covered in typical "how to tell if someone is lying" sites, for instance this one:

Liars will often repeat themselves ad nauseam when telling a half-truth or a complete falsehood. This is done for three reasons. First, they will repeat a lie over and over in order to solidify the ‘facts’ in their mind, so they can stick to their story. Secondly, they’re trying to convince you that they’re telling the truth by solidifying their words in your mind. Lastly, they repeat themselves in order to buy time to come up with the next part of their story. If they were telling the truth, they’d be able to recall everything without thinking about it.

. . . When a person gives too much information when questioned, it’s because they have rehearsed in their head exactly what to say, and exactly how to say it. They also feel that if they’re able to give a full story, they’re more likely to be believed. However, this often just shows they’ve anticipated what the other person will say next, and jump right into answering subsequent questions before the questions have even been asked. If someone seems to immediately have every answer for all the questions you have for them, they’ve most likely constructed a huge lie in their head and are ready to stick to it no matter what.

This is a useful observation:

The research conducted at the University of Michigan found “speaking with more vocal fill” to be a common indicator of deception. Glass says that people tend to use these words more when they’re trying to buy time to figure out what they’re going to say next.

This is a big tell:

When someone is lying, they might avoid answering your question directly. Instead, they might try to change the subject or deflect the conversation away from themselves.

This is one of the tested and most common signs of lying. If you notice someone doing this, it’s a good sign that they’re not being truthful with you. They will slowly try to shift the conversation to another topic to take the focus off of themselves.

It’s just what most people call “red handed.” It’s not usual to see a person try so hard to avoid a certain topic, so if you sense this, then it’s a positive sight that they are lying.

In the press briefing, Ms Jean-Pierre was directly asked a yes-or-no question, which she promptly evaded by providing too much information and never answering yes or no. I have no idea what the truth is that she was trying to conceal, but the pattern of her answers suggests she's trying to conceal something.

Beyond that, who knows?

Dark Brandon Is Coming Back

Voter: We need Dark Brandon back

President Biden: Dark Brandon is coming back

Voters: *burst into applause* pic.twitter.com/fBPL01ReeK

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) July 7, 2024

So the latest we hear is that Joe has written a letter to congressional Democrats this morning saying it's time to end talk of his withdrawing. This comes as reports from last week indicate that his inner circle of advisers has shrunk to Hunter, Dr Jill, and the Rasputin-like Anthony Bernal. Bernal, who as we've seen often represents himself to the rest of the White House staff as speaking for "the family", seems to be behind reports that the family blames staff for his poor performance in the June 27 debate.

Meanwhile, the New York Post reports that

A senior White House official who has worked with President Biden since his days as vice president reportedly joined the growing chorus of calls urging him against running for reelection.

That unnamed official, described as working with Biden, 81, throughout his vice presidency, 2020 campaign and presidency explained to the New York Times that observing him in private and during travels together made clear that the Democrat doesn’t have what it takes to defeat Donald Trump.

This sent me searching for possible names. Among those mentioned as helping with his debate prep, Anita Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, come to mind, but both worked for Obama for only brief periods, and the same applies to their work in the Biden White House. A better candidate might be Mike Donilon. According to Wikipedia,

Between 2009 and 2013,he served as Counselor to Vice President Biden in the Obama administration. Before his White House appointment, Donilon worked with the vice-presidential candidate to help him prepare for the debates and as a traveling advisor.

Donilon became a Senior Advisor to the President at the start of Joe's term in January 2021. Another possibility could be Ron Klain, who was Joe's Chief of Staff as vice president from 2009 to 2011 and his Chief of Staff as president from 2021 to 2023. However, he didn't work with Joe "throughout his vice presidency" as Donilon did, and although he returned to help Biden prepare for the June 27 debate, he hasn't worked in the White House since he left last year. Nevertheless, this piece in Newsweek by Ladan Rafii outlines the overall problem for anyone who's advised Joe:

When it comes to Biden, the only close adviser I once knew is his former White House chief of staff and trusted confidant, Ron Klain.

You see, I attended Georgetown University with him many years ago, and we took the same course in U.S. politics. There weren't that many of us, so we were in a small classroom sitting in close proximity to one another.

. . . I was impressed (if not amazed) by his level of intellect. Time and time again, in every class we had, he revealed this to us—without any arrogance, but with a measure of confidence that made us all take note of him.

. . . Which is why I'm having such difficulty believing and processing what happened just a few nights ago.

I learned from a New York Times report that Ron left the White House last year to become chief legal officer of Airbnb. I wondered about that. Knowing how smart he was, I thought maybe he no longer wanted to be associated with what he perceived to be a sinking ship.

Anyone as clever as him would certainly know when he's on board one, and take the right measures to make sure he jumps off it when the first signs appear and the ship begins to teeter.

. . . Then in mid-May, there was an article stating that he was taking a break from his Airbnb job to return to the White House, and help prepare Biden for his debate with Trump.

Apparently, Ron is known in Washington, D.C. circles for being one of the best debate trainers in town. He's very sharp and astute with a depth of political knowledge and experience very few can match.

. . . [He said imn the article,] "We need to have debates where the candidates get equal time . . . where the American people can compare the two people who are the leading candidates for president."

Well, Ron, we certainly got to do that on Thursday. Maybe more than you would have ever wanted or known. As they say: In life, be careful what you wish for.

These days I often ask myself: What happened to the Ron Klain I once knew? He had all the answers back then, so where are his answers now? How could he have let such a calamity happen on live television in front of a global audience of tens of millions?

. . . Please give us the right answer, Mr. Klain.

It's beginning to sound as though some of Joe's long-term, highly capable advisers had begun to lose confidence long before the current campaign season. This retrospective by William A Jacobson at the Legal Insurrection aggregator lists some of the warnings everyone had been ignoring:

There has been a grand coverup of Joe Biden’s cognitive problems by Democrats with a big assist from the media. There is now faux contrition beginning to come out from the media, but don’t believe them. Defeating Trump in 2020 squelched the story, and they tried it again in 2024.

I’m so old, I remember when Biden’s cognitive problems were an issue in 2020, raised by Democrats in the primaries. We knew then. A lot of people knew then.

We covered it. We even started a Tag Biden Cognitive. I wrote about it. Stacey wrote about it. Mike wrote about it.

He starts a long list with this tweet from Jake Tapper from as long ago as 2019:

We’re starting to hear more Democrats publicly expressing doubts like this one about Biden. He’s been gaffe-prone for much of his career so presumably they think this is something else. https://t.co/jXXThBEryu

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 9, 2019

So it's starting to sound like even some of Joe's longest and most loyal retainers had begun to lose confidence in him, like apparently Ron Klain as of early last year, and according to the UK Daily Mail,

A simmering rift between Joe Biden's family and staff has finally boiled over after his disastrous debate performance last week.

. . . Fallout from the debate gave Biden's family, including his disgraced son Hunter, ammunition to settle old scores with his staff and be more involved.

They blame his staff for failing to adequately prepare him for the debate and more broadly for not putting him in a position to show his strengths.

'I believe the family has witnessed blunder after blunder by key staff personnel and the debate is likely the straw that broke the camel's back,' one of 13 sources close to the president told NBC.

. . . 'The debate fiasco has opened up a lane for the family to surpass staff and start helping out their father and brother who they love dearly,' another insider said.

So it looks like the upshot's going to be the return of Dark Brandon. It seems to me that it's hard to underestimate the counterproductive effect of the combined advice Joe's been given by both his staff and his family over the past several years -- consider the whole "lawfare" campaign that's done nothing but drive Trump's poll numbers up from the start of the indictments last year. More recently we've seen the utterly calamitous effect of scheduling the early debate soon after Joe's two trips to Europe, which themselves simply set up the questions about his health that the debate only exacerbated.

Well, we're hearing rumbles that there will be resignations by Biden staff over the coming week. The most we can conclude is that the crazies are fully in control, and they're unleashing Dark Brandon again.

Where's Kamala?

Biden: “If Trump wins in November, I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and did the goodest job I know I could do.”

“The goodest job” 😂
pic.twitter.com/zQuGYUdI0F

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 6, 2024

It's a holiday weekend, Congress is out of session, and it seems to have taken longer than usual for any sort of consensus to build over Joe's Friday interview with George Stephanopoulos. But the standout point that nobody seems to want to mention is Joe's remark that he "did the goodest job I know I could do". Let's face it, this is how a toddler talks. For me, it matches Joe's forehead bump with Pope Francis at the G7, which I characterized at the time as "acting like a toddler".

It' s significant that even David Axelrod in a generally clear-eyed piece at CNN had to redact Joe's actual words into "did as good a job as I know I can do", when even the ABC transcript says "I did the goodest job as I know I can do". In other words, this sort of thing is such a delicate matter that even people who want to have an adult-level talk about it must avoid calling it what it is. Nobody wants to mention that the President of the US at key moments functions at the level of a toddler.

All we know for now is that some Democrat representatives are going to have a zoom chat with Leader Jeffries this afternoon, and some Democrat senators are going to meet with Virginia Sen Warner tomorrow. Others have commented that if David Axelrod is going public with the comments he made at the link -- "he will eventually do what duty and love of country requires, and step aside" -- it must be with Obama's knowledge and tacit approval.

Of course, the idea that Joe should "step aside" is conveniently vague. Does it mean simply withdraw as a candidate for the November election but remain in office until January, or resign as president now in favor of Vice President Harris? Well, isn't this the sort of issue that leadership in Congress and the vice presidency should maybe start to work through? It's hard to avoid thinking that there's going to have to be a delegation that will visit Joe sooner rather than later, and it will have to present him with a specific agenda that covers those alternatives.

That in turn means there needs to be a game plan, and that game plan needs to encompass the contingency that Joe will refuse to step aside, where "step aside" means resign the presidency. In that case, the vice president will need to line up a majority of the cabinet to sign a letter to the House Speaker and the president pro tem of the Senate that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, at which point congressional leadership will have to be ready to line up two-thirds of both houses to support that conclusion -- and any delegation to the Oval Office will need to have this in their pockets when they walk in.

This places a major responsibility on the vice president to step up and begin to exercise real leadership. Even if the wise heads get together and decide all that's needful is for Joe to withdraw as a candidate for the election but continue in office until January, the vice president will need to portray herself as a calm and stable figure who under the circumstances is doubly ready to succeed to the presidency. But even then, the assumption we've been hearing is that if Joe withdraws as a candidate but stays until Inauguration Day, Kamala will be the one to pick up the mantle and campaign for November.

But this brings up at least a couple of obvious questions: if the open border is one of the main issues for November, Kamala is the one who had nominal resonsibility for solving the problem throughout Joe's term, and she did nothing about it. But now we'll have an even more pressing question: under the 25th Amendment, it's the vice president's responsibility to exercise the leadership needed to start the process of declaring the president unfit. So far, she's done nothing in that direction, either.

But there's a question beyond that: the reports we've been hearing are that Joe's comdition has grown noticeably worse in recent months -- in the Stephanopoulos transcript, he even asks, "Do you dispute that there have been more lapses, especially in the last several months?" As far as we know, Kamala theoretically has lunch with Joe once a week, although other reports say this happens only "occasionally". But one of Kamala's implicit responsibilities, in addition to being border czar, is to keep tabs on Joe's health -- or at least, that's what we might surmise.

An entirely reasonable question that might come up for Kamala, either from the press or in a debate, would be whether she herself noticed any change in Joe's condition, since others have been pointing it out, and what she may have done, given her responsibilities under the 25th Amendment, to plan for contingencies and make others aware of them. What is her role, if any, in the discussions that are said to be taking place among Democrat congressional leadership?

What discussions -- entirely prudent and reasonable under the circumstances -- has she initiated with Speaker Johnson and Leader Schumer, or among Joe's cabinet? Is she prepared even to make non-committal but reassuring statements to the press regarding her current role?

Given the speed at which events are likely to develop, these are questions that all of these leadership figures need to be ready to address. In fact, I suspect there's steadily growing pressure from down-ballot politicians and major Democrat donors to address such questions sooner rather than later. The one figure in current leadership who seems by far least able to address them is Kamala Harris, but she's the one who's going to be most likely to have to deal with them within a fairly short timeframe.

Try to imagine what interviews and press statements she'll have to give when the contingency arises, whether it's either Joe withdrawing just as the November candidate or resigning the presidency entirely -- and she'll have to make them on almost no notice. And this just leads to a whole additional set of new contingencies, because let's face it, Kamala's job up to now has been to be a useful idiot, and I don't see her suddenly rising to her new role.

The only thing that's at least partly reassuring is that if nobody else, Trump and Speaker Johnson have almost certainly been thinking them through. Leader McConnell, though -- not so much.

Who's Running The Country?

According to the UK Daily Mail,

While the president has said he has no plans to step aside, he is known be talking to vast numbers of people, but only listening to views of a very tight circle, including those of his wife.

And Jill is said to have taken a dim view of those wishing to kick her husband off the ticket, as it's claimed she's the driving force between his insistence on staying in the race. The claim was made by ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz moments after Biden's make or break interview with the network Friday night.

The 'inner circle' of voices that include a select circle of advisers – including son, Hunter, are telling Biden, 81, that he can win and that he needs to keep going with his re-election bid.

So who are the rest of the inner circle? According to the New York Post,

President Biden’s inner circle has gotten smaller following his disastrous debate last week — with his wife’s top aide Anthony Bernal emerging as one of the 81-year-old’s key advisers alongside longtime confidante Mike Donilon, four sources close to or inside the White House tell The Post.

Bernal, 51, is a divisive figure for allegedly bullying and sexually harassing colleagues — and his influence was likened by three sources to that held by the mystic Grigori Rasputin over the family and court of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia.

First lady Jill Biden considers Bernal her “work husband” and he’s also close to scandal-plagued first son Hunter, whom Bernal greeted with a hug June 11 after his felony gun conviction.

Bernal in particular seems to be closest to the center:

A White House source told The Post that many of the president’s old guard of longtime aides are believed to be left out of the loop of discussions “about what’s next” — saying Bernal, who frequently vacations with the first family, “seriously” has a Rasputin-like pull over the first family.

Another source said they agreed with the Rasputin analogy — describing Bernal’s influence and immunity from consequences for alleged personal misconduct as perplexing to fellow aides.

“He’s like a tick who has just latched himself on for the last 15 years,” this source said.

According to another Daily Mail story,

At public events, in meetings, and even on family holidays, Bernal is a permanent fixture in the Biden furniture. Nothing, it seems, passes without his approval.

'He has an unmatched ability to influence things in the president's team,' one former co-worker told the New York Post in March.

In March, the New York Post reported on sexual harassment allegations against Bernal:

A top Biden White House official has bullied and verbally sexually harassed colleagues over more than a decade, The Post has learned — but is considered “untouchable” because first lady Jill Biden regards him as her “work husband.”

Anthony Bernal, whose status as the first lady’s top aide grants him enormous clout in both White House operations and Democratic politics, has repeatedly speculated in the workplace about the penis size of colleagues, according to three sources with firsthand knowledge.

. . . “I have heard him say inappropriate things about people’s sexuality or pry inappropriately into people’s personal lives,” one former co-worker recalled of Bernal, who is openly gay.

“I heard him ask if people are gay all the time.”

. . . In total, five sources described to The Post instances of bullying, claiming that Bernal frequently is so demeaning in conversation that he reduces colleagues to tears, mendaciously giving last-minute input on projects, and grilling people on whether they are loyal.

“He says, ‘Dr. Biden would have a problem with that’ or ‘Dr. Biden wouldn’t like that.’ And nobody knows what she really wants. Half the time, you don’t know if he talked to her or not,” said a former colleague. Another source who has worked with Bernal said, “I could think of more than one instance where he pontificated on whether someone was gay or not or said, ‘They are definitely gay.’”

Ingrid Jacques reviewed the Biden family situation in USA Today:

Biden’s wife must know better than anyone how her husband has declined in recent years. Yet, she and other close aides have gone out of their way to make sure the president interacts with as few people in the White House as possible, recent reporting by Axios confirms.

The answer is pretty simple. For Exhibit A, look no further than the first lady’s landing on the cover of Vogue just days after her husband’s flop of a debate performance.

. . . It’s not a stretch to say that the first lady is pulling a lot of the strings that her husband can no longer pull. And she doesn’t want to give up that power.

That’s led to comparisons with another first lady: Edith Wilson, who took over most presidential duties during the last few years of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency after he suffered a stroke in 1919. The public was kept largely in the dark.

But Jill Biden isn't Edith Wilson -- someone is actually pulling Dr Jill's strings as well. It looks like that's Anthony Bernal. The parallel isn't to Edith Wilson, the parallel is to her contemporary Rasputin.